The piano man looked at her, said, “Huh? How’s that?”
“She’s moved — gone away.”
“She can’t move that piano without written consent.”
“Well, she’s done it. Ask him.” The man turned to the clerk. “She here?”
“Well — she asked me to—”
“She here, or ain’t she?”
The clerk said with exasperation, “I’ll take care of the bill and will be responsible for the piano.”
“Five bucks,” the man said, pushing the bill out on the counter. “If she moves it without written consent it’s a serious offence.”
“We’ll guarantee there won’t be any damage and that she’ll get in touch with you at once.”
“She can’t move it. Five bucks.”
The clerk opened the cash drawer of the safe, pulled out a five-dollar bill, slapped it crisply down on the counter, and said, “A receipt, please.” He looked at Bertha Cool and said, “Good afternoon, Mrs. Cool.”
Bertha didn’t move, remaining with her elbows propped on the counter, staring down at the bill. She watched the man sign a receipt, shove the receipted bill across, put the five dollars in his pocket.
“Tell her to look at her lease agreement. She can’t move any leased goods.” The clerk started to say something, checked himself, glanced with exasperation at Bertha Cool.
The man swung away from the desk, headed back across the ornate lobby to the street door.
The clerk moved toward a series of pigeon-holes with the receipted bill, then detoured when only half-way there to drop it into the cash drawer in the safe.
“Almost forgot,” he said.
“Do some more thinking,” Bertha said, “and you might remember something.”
He was definitely supercilious. “I think that will be all, Mrs. Cool.”
Bertha hesitated a moment, then apparently somewhat crushed, crossed the lobby toward the street door.
Bertha walked across the street to the news-stand. “Somebody moved a piano out of that joint across the street,” she said, “within the last day or two. I’d like to get the name on the moving van.”
The man shook his head. “I can’t help you.”
“Didn’t you notice the name?”
“I don’t remember seeing any van there within the last day or two, but, of course, I’m busy over here.”
Bertha covered four more stores with the same result. Then she went to the telephone and called her office. When Elsie Brand answered the telephone, she said, “What can you do on the lah-de-dah, Elsie?”
“What do you mean?” Elsie asked.
Bertha said, “Dolly Cornish was in apartment 15B down at the Locklear Hotel Apartments. The place is as stiff as a starched collar. Put on your most grand-dame air. Don’t act human; look down your nose at the male impersonator that’s behind the counter. Tell him you want to look over his vacancies, if he has any. String him along.”
“When do you want me to do it?” Elsie asked.
“As soon as you can get a cab,” Bertha said. “I’ll be waiting around the corner. You’ll see me, but don’t speak to me. After you come out, walk around the corner and I’ll tag along.”
Bertha hung up the receiver, decided she had five minutes to wait before Elsie could possibly get there. She walked over to the news-stand, looked over some of the magazines, then strolled up to the corner, waiting. She saw Elsie Brand enter the apartment hotel, emerge some fifteen minutes later. Bertha sauntered around the corner and Elsie joined her.
“Well?” Bertha asked.
“Did I hand that clerk a line!” Elsie said. “He mentioned they’d require references for a single woman. I asked him if the Mayor of the city and the Governor of the state would be all right. He called an assistant manager to show me around. They only have two vacancies. One of them is 15B.”
“It’s vacant?” Bertha asked.
Elsie nodded.
Bertha frowned. “What would you do,” she asked, “if you were renting a piano, and wanted to move it?”
“I— Why, I don’t know,” Elsie said, laughing.
Bertha said suddenly, “you’d call up the people you’d rented it from, wouldn’t you?”
“I guess I would.”
Bertha said with sudden decision, “Go back in there. Tell him that you understood from a friend there was another vacancy. Ask him if he’s certain you’ve seen them all. Try and find out if they’ve rented an apartment in the last two or three days. Put on the high-and-mighty act for him. He’ll fall for that. Otherwise you won’t get to first base.”
“Leave it to me,” Elsie said. “I have him eating out of my hand already. Do you want to wait here?”
“Yes.”
Elsie was back with the information in five minutes. “Apartment 12B was vacant until yesterday. A Mrs. Stevens took it then.”
Bertha grinned. “Nice chap, that clerk. It’s probably his master mind that originated the idea. All right, Elsie, go on back to the office.”
Bertha entered a telephone booth, called the Locklear Apartments, said, “A Mrs. Stevens left word that I was to call her in apartment 12B. Know anything about it?”
“Just a moment.”
A connection clicked, and a woman’s voice said, cautiously, “Hello?”
Bertha said, “This is the piano company. The clerk paid the bill on the piano, said you’d moved it into another apartment.”
“Oh, yes. I’m glad you called. I’ve been intending to call you. Yes, it’s quite all right.”
“Apartment in the same building?”
“Yes.”
Bertha said, “I have to look it over. There’s a charge of fifty cents.”
“Oh, that will be quite all right.”
“I’m in your neighbourhood now,” Bertha said.
“All right. I’ll be expecting you. 12B is the number. I should have notified you sooner.”
Bertha walked back to the Locklear Apartments. The clerk looked at her with exasperation, started to say something, but Bertha moved toward the elevators.
The clerk raised a folding gate and approached Bertha Cool with businesslike authority. “I’m sorry, but we don’t permit strangers to enter the elevators, unannounced.”
Bertha Cool smiled sweetly at him. “Mrs. Stevens, in apartment 12B, asked me to come right up,” she said. “I was just talking with her over the telephone.”
As the clerk tried to keep expression from his face, Bertha nodded to the elevator boy. “Let’s go,” she said.
Someone was talking on the telephone in apartment 12B when Bertha knocked on the door. A few moments later the conversation terminated, and Bertha knocked more loudly.
There was no sound from within the room. Bertha raised her voice. “Going to let me in, Dolly, or do I wait for you to come out?”
The door opened. An angry woman somewhere in the thirties stood glaring belligerently at Bertha Cool. “I have just been advised,” she said, “that you—”
“I know,” Bertha told her. “The clerk doesn’t like me. I don’t like him. Move over, dearie, and let me in.”
Bertha’s powerful frame pushed the lighter woman to one side with an easy lack of effort. She moved on into the apartment, nodded approvingly at the piano, selected the most comfortable chair, dropped down in it, and lit a cigarette.
The woman in the doorway said, “There are rules against this sort of thing, you know.”
“I know.”
“And the clerk tells me that I can have the authorities eject you.”
“He would say something like that.”
“That is correct, I believe.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Why not?”
“Because I have contacts at headquarters. A word to them, and in place of arresting me, they’d drag you down to the D.A.’s office for questioning. The newspapers would get your picture, and—”